San Francisco's suspended sheriff can fight on, but even if he gets his case to the Board of Supervisors he faces an almost certain 11-0 vote against his reinstatement.

Ross Mirkarimi's progressive onetime allies don't want to be tainted in their upcoming re-election campaigns by having voted to keep him on the job. So they are going to do their best to get him out of the picture.

At this point, Mirkarimi does not have the resources or support to keep up his fight. Other than former Mayor Art Agnos, who gave Mirkarimi a place to stay after a court order barred him from seeing his wife, there doesn't seem to be a soul ready to stand with him.

Unfortunately for Mirkarimi, he never grasped that when you're a politician and you stand accused in the court of public opinion, all your constitutional rights go out the window.

Staying silent will definitely be held against you.

And if you try to use those rights, say, to keep evidence out of court, you do so at the peril of your career.

Your lawyers may be giving you sensible legal advice, to stay quiet and not make a move.

That can work in court. But it will kill you with the public.

Yes, Mitt Romney has the delegate lead in the Republican nomination fight, but it's not over yet.

If he comes up even a little short heading into the convention, he might need to do some negotiating with Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum.

Gingrich is still marketable with independents - say, as secretary of state in a Romney administration. But any deal with Santorum will be toxic with the center and a major problem for Romney in the November election.

State Attorney General Kamala Harris is quietly working her way onto the national stage.

She was one of the guests at the recent state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron. And she and her sister, Maya Harris from the Ford Foundation, were featured speakers at the recent international year of the woman confab back in New York.

There was a lot of public praise for Sen. Dianne Feinstein having started the group back when she was mayor, and very little said about how Rose Pak appeared to be running the show.

It's an interesting note, considering that years ago Pak's Hong Kong-based faction of the Chinese American community was often at odds with the Shanghai group led by Florence Fang.

I say Rose was running the show because when I tried to sneak out, she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me all the way back in and made me stay until Mayor Lee finished his speech.

It was actually worth the wait, because in acknowledging Pak, he called her the most formidable person he'd come to know in town.

Then he said, "On second thought, I'm not sure I really know her at all."

Students Rising Above had a great fundraiser the other night for a truly great program. The stars are the kids, many without family or homes. They are indeed rising above the challenges of their lives, with some 90 percent going on to college.

Thanks to Bay Area donors, and help from KPIX, the program raised $900,000 to help those kids keep right on rising.

It's about a guy and a tree with a thousand leaves. Every time Murphy says a word, a leaf falls off the tree. When the last leaf falls, he dies.

How bad is it? By the time the credits rolled, the only two people left in the theater were me and the flasher in his raincoat.

"21 Jump Street." It should be called "21 Jump Street XXX." They do everything in that movie, and the big scene at the end involving a cop, a gun and the bad guy's privates gives a whole new meaning to the term oral sex.

They ought to put both these movies on a spaceship with John Carter and send them off to Mars.